


Duty

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [12]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short series of tie-ins from Furiosa's days as an Imperator until she gets assigned as a Vault Guard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duty

By the time the Gas Town boys came riding out to ‘save’ the wounded War Rig, Furiosa had already gotten them back on the road, the front axles on the tanker cracked but holding, the dead gun of the black vehicle watching her like some accusing eye. None of the War Boys looked at her like she’d done anything wrong; they called her Boss and followed orders she still had no real right to give, securing the thing as salvage for the Immortan’s glory. 

When a Gas Town Imperator asked what’d happened, Furiosa looked him straight in the eye and told him that an enemy vehicle had ambushed them on Gas Town’s side of the road. That they’d better keep a close eye on what trash washed up, before the Citadel decided the risk needed more reward. 

After that, he didn’t ask what’d happened to Ripsaw. 

 

***

 

The day Joe made her an Imperator was the first time she met his sons. She’d heard of them, in her days as a War Boy, knew their names. But it was still a shock to see Rictus Erectus, a grown man with a shifting daemon, and Corpus Colossus, whose arms and legs were twisted up inside a soft sack of a body, but whose rat daemon had sharp teeth and sharper eyes. 

There was ranking even among Imperators. She was back at the bottom, but this didn’t bother her nearly as much as Joe’s presence did. She did not look up when he smeared black grease across her forehead, did not shudder at his touch, did not allow her heartbeat to run away with her. Still, when his mangy hyena daemon pressed close and snuffled at her, Furiosa was hard pressed not to flinch. 

If she was recognized, the hyena said nothing. If she was recognized, it did not stop her from becoming Imperator Furiosa, who had a crew and a place in Joe’s inner circle and a room of her own. Two days after her ‘crowning’, Furiosa tightened leather bands across her belly and wore her arm to a War meeting. 

It felt heavy and wrong on her body, unbalanced her after so long without anything there. But it thudded with satisfying weight against the wood of the table, and Furiosa smiled a terrifying smile. The power in her arm was well worth the blood that ran along her back when the leather rubbed through her skin, the way her scarred arm would weep when she wore it too long or too much sand got into the cup. Furiosa told herself that a lot of things were worth the power she had now. She wasn’t really sure if she believed it. 

 

***

 

Her first task as an Imperator was to fetch a red-haired girl from Gas Town. The price made her head spin, the task made her want to puke, and the curiosity of her crew made her paranoia tick up a few notches. 

“What d’you think it’s like, being honored like that?” Click asked on the quiet road there. He was a gunner, sitting next to her because she was an Imperator and she didn’t need _protection_ but apparently her crew thought different. “Raised up so high by the Immortan?” 

Furiosa shifted roughly, grinding gears for a second before finding her place. She didn’t answer. 

 

***

 

War Boys came and went like days and nights. Furiosa kept count of all of them, marked them in her mind because she wouldn’t be able to explain why she was keeping a tally on her clothes or in her room or in scars like they did. Funnily enough, Ace stayed by her. Not so eager for the halls of Valhalla, though it seemed that every time she looked his skin was bumped in another place. He had been a good schemer, and now he was an excellent second. He had the experience of a hundred Road Wars, and she had the cunning to win all of them. They made a good team, and her crew developed a reputation for being the strong right hand of the Immortan himself. They had the highest rankings among the War Boy barracks, got into scraps and fights, clawed and bit and kicked their way up to the top. 

If she had been less of a person, it wouldn’t have made her proud. But she felt like less and less of a person every day, so maybe soon she would forget the tally and her days and remember only how much she wanted to put a bullet through Joe’s daemon like she had Ripsaw’s. 

 

***

 

The day came when she was summoned to His throne room, and she would have thought it just another batch of orders. Only there were no patrols scheduled for her today (She did not do supply runs. Not yet.) and by now every person in the Water Tower had heard Rictus shouting, _demanding_ he be let into the Vault. He was there, when Furiosa came to kneel before the Immortan, but there were bruises on his chest and over his eyes, and his daemon was limping in the shape of a greyhound, her chest pressed almost to the floor. 

“I am giving this duty to you, Imperator. It is the highest honor I can bestow.” The Immortan reigned from his throne of metal skulls with all the grace of a walrus. His daemon sat by his side, her fur spotted and mangy, old blood on her teeth. But Furiosa knelt before him, laced together fingers of metal and bone to show her devotion to the V8. Inside, her guts were writhing, her heart was beating too loud in her ears. _Back to the Vault,_ it thundered in red. _Back to the Vault._

Every War Boy and Imperator in the room was looking at her with naked envy and hatred; even Calisthenics, Rictus’s still-unsettled daemon, seemed to have picked up on the tension focussed somewhere other than her. 

“You will stand by my treasures day and night,” he told her, and Furiosa had long ago wiped unnecessary emotion from herself. There was no trace of expression on her face when Joe’s diseased hyena snuffled up to her. “And guard them from everything that tarnishes their beauty.” At that, Calisthenics shifted to a mouse and hid in Rictus’s pocket. The son of a Warlord only glared, but it wasn’t Joe his silence hate was aimed at; it was Furiosa. 

She stood when Joe came to a halt in front of her, ignoring Rictus’s displeasure. He was hardly the first to hate her, in this place, and he wouldn’t be the last. On her ever-changing list of threats, he didn’t even merit a top spot. Furiosa ducked her chin down close to her chest at Joe’s closeness, her world abruptly narrowing to the last few inches of safety between her and the Warlord. But her bird-like threat display was taken as a sign of agreement, obeisance, and Joe delivered her to the Vault himself, his sons and Imperators and War Pups trailing behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Ladies, Gentlemen, Nobles, let me thank you for reaching what I like to think of as the conclusion of the first arc of our story. We now begin (still backstory, of course) our journey through the time of the Five Wives (and occasionally Furiosa). And never fear! We will reach movie events (and the most exciting bits, the ones that come after the events of Fury Road) one day. They are being written as we speak!


End file.
